The Truth About Salt In Your Food

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The Salt Puzzle

Photo: Randy Mayor

You can't live without salt: It's essential for human metabolism. And you don't want to: It makes a lot of good food taste better and plays important roles in cooking. But you're being told to cut back, especially if you're one of the 155 million at-risk Americans who are advised to consume just 1,500mg per day to lower the risk of high blood pressure. (The rest of us are allowed 2,300mg, which is about a teaspoon). Banishing salt isn't realistic or even desirable. Lowering salt, though, becomes easier when you know where it lies (naturally, and in processed foods) and how much you're adding in the kitchen. To that end, we decided to try some kitchen and shopping experiments, sending food samples to a lab. How much sodium does your marinade really add?

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Does a longer brine add much salt?

Photo: Randy Mayor

Naturally lean meats, like turkey and pork, benefit from a brine. We wondered if sodium goes up with time, and if so, how much.

THE TEST: We soaked three 12-pound turkeys in a brining solution that contained ½ cup of kosher salt (that's about 46,000mg sodium!) for 12, 18, and 24 hours. For comparison, we also analyzed an unbrined bird.

The largest sodium increase happens in the first 12 hours. It then tapers off, but the tenderizing continues. Only about 1% of the total sodium from the brine is absorbed. Bottom line: If you like a longer brine (we prefer 24 hours), the added sodium isn't that significant. Brine for texture reasons, and put away sodium fears.

Kosher turkeys may have 200mg per 4 ounces due to the processing method. Frozen turkeys may have been washed in salt water to speed the freezing, adding 200 to 350mg per 4 ounces. And some birds are enhanced with up to 15% broth, which adds 330 to 440mg per 4 ounces. Check your labels.

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The saltier the water, the saltier the pasta.

Photo: Randy Mayor

Many chefs implore home cooks to heavily salt pasta cooking water ("make it as salty as the ocean," says one popular TV chef). Yes, salt does enhance the pasta's flavor. But so do the sauce and other ingredients, which may be salted, too. As our tests show, sodium-wary cooks need to moderate the hand that salts the water.

THE TEST: We boiled a pound each of dry spaghetti (sodium-free) in 4 quarts of water containing varying amounts of salt.

Bottom line: It's not that pasta soaks up salt like a sponge: Only 3% was absorbed into each serving of pasta. But 3% of the sodium in ¼ cup is 896mg—nearly 40% of your 2,300mg daily limit. So reduce (don't eliminate) the salt in the water; save it for the sauce.

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How big is your "pinch" of salt?

We asked a dozen staffers—editors and Test Kitchen folks—to give us a pinch of salt. Weights ranged from 0.06 to 1.32g, averaging 0.48g. Half a gram contains about 180mg sodium. A pinch that size per day for a year equals 65,700mg sodium!

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Why some shrimp are saltier than others.

Photo: Bernhard Winkellmann/Stockfood

When fresh shrimp are frozen (often just minutes after being caught), they are washed in a saline solution to help bring their temperature down faster. Quicker chilling prevents ice crystals from forming inside the shrimp, resulting in better texture when defrosted; it also helps keep them from clumping together as they freeze. "Easy-peel" shrimp are soaked in an additional sodium solution. Pro: They slip out of their shells effortlessly. Con: More salt. How much more?

THE TEST: We steamed and peeled five varieties of shrimp, then shipped them to the lab for sodium analysis.

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Why some salt labels don't tell the whole story.

Photo: Randy Mayor

Food labels generally tell you what's in the package, not what will be in the food after cooking. Here's a dramatic example of what that can mean for the home cook.

Soba noodle labels list as much as 900mg sodium per serving—which has limited our use of it. But when we boiled five brands of soba, they lost an average of 80% of their sodium, down to about 80mg per serving. The FDA only requires labels to list the nutritional properties of foods as packaged. Food makers may voluntarily present "as prepared" information, but that's an extra step, and calculation, for them. Most foods used in cooking are rarely consumed as packaged—like soba noodles.

Bottom line: Always consider the ingredients added and methods used in preparing foods.

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Coarser salt doesn't yield automatic sodium savings.

Photo: Randy Mayor

It's conventional wisdom that big-grained salt contains about 25% less sodium by volume than table salt. The idea: Coarse crystals don't pack tightly and take up more space in a measuring spoon (with lots of air between them), meaning you consume less sodium. Labels on one brand show a 110mg difference between ¼ teaspoon of their table and kosher salts; that's a 19% savings if you use kosher. But our analysis of six salts showed less variation per ¼ teaspoon than you might think.

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Our fave sauce: a cautionary tale

Photo: Randy Mayor

We've long recommended McCutcheon's bottled marinara sauce because of its great flavor and the low sodium level on its label—only 185mg per half-cup listed. When we tested three batches, though, they came in at more than three times that number. We talked to Vanessa McCutcheon-Smith, and she attributed the difference to a change in the supplier of the canned tomatoes they use as a base (no salt is added during the cooking). It's not routine to test a batch when the tomatoes change, she explained—only to calculate nutrition based on numbers provided by suppliers.

"Knowing what I know about how things change on the supply chain, I don't put a lot of merit in the information on food panels," she added.

Nutrition label numbers are allowed 20% of wiggle room, but the FDA does few random audits. As a general rule: Trust your taste buds; if something tastes salty, it probably is, whatever the label says.

Michael's of Brooklyn and Dell' Amore are tasty and pretty low in sodium—on their labels and in our lab tests.